Yes, Indeed, Matthew may have edited Mark’s Gospel since, keenly looking into the Bible; some passages are unified within the gospel of Mathew. It’s interesting that some of the readings are widely edited or the verses are rearranged while maintaining the meaning of the passages similar to Mark’s gospel. At a glance, someone might be inclined to say that the scripts were authored by one individual who was trying to paraphrase the second gospel. The Mathew’s gospel is closely related to the scripts from Mark. It’s important to denote that Mathew had interests in some parts or passages of the gospel of Mark. And unfortunately, the other passages that he would find not useful for his purpose, Mathew would trim, edit, and re-order some events the passages to fit into his narrative.

Mark 6:45-52 alongside Mathew 14:22-33 are parallels: they talk about similar events. For example, they talk about Jesus’s walking on water and how he sent the multitude away, how he marched onto the top of the mountain to pray among all other major events that took place in the two passages. However, the only slight difference is that Mathew describes the events in a more vivid and in-depth manner. Besides the minor differences, there also exist significant differences in the two gospels (Muddiman, and Barton, 56). They include;

(1) In Mark, the story of Jesus walking on water and (2) and still in Mark, the disciples think that Jesus was a ghost and therefore telling them to gather courage and fight relentlessly was weird for them.  Contrary to the gospel of Mathew where Jesus asks the disciples not to let fear overpower them rather keep cheered (Muddiman, and Barton, 56).

The similarities that Mathew creates from the gospel of Mark indicate that Mathew is lengthy and expanded which is likely a copy from Mark, who seems to have written the passages with a few words. It is relatively easy for Mathew to make extensions from Mark than Mark shortening from Mathew. Mark 9:2-10 is contrasted with Matthew 17:1-13, particularly during Jesus’ configuration, have different content. Mark says that Jesus took John, Peter, and James alongside for prayers whereas Mathew denotes that Jesus took His three disciples and added that James was a brother to John. Also, they show the difference in terms of how they described Jesus, His clothing, and how His clothes were transfigured. For example, Mark refers to Jesus as Rabbi while Mathew refers to Jesus and “He is Lord” (Martin, 106). These and other above explained statements give evidence about how Mathew edited Mark’s gospel.

Work cited:

Martin, Dale B. New Testament History And Literature. Yale University Press, 2012. Pp. 106-108

Muddiman, John, and John Barton. The Gospels. OUP Oxford, 2010, p. 56.